The Bears are up next as Doug Pederson continues making the head coaching interview rounds.
Pederson, who led the Eagles to the Super Bowl four years ago, has already emerged as one of the hot head coaching candidates. He interviewed last week with the Jaguars, who fired Urban Meyer 13 games into the season.
The Bears job is an intriguing one for Pederson for a few reasons. First of all, he would be replacing Matt Nagy, who he worked with on Andy Reid’s Eagles staff from 2009 through 2012 and with the Chiefs from 2013 through 2015.
Nagy was Pederson’s quarterbacks coach from 2013 through 2015 when Pederson was Reid’s offensive coordinator, and Nagy succeeded Pederson as offensive coordinator when Pederson became head coach of the Eagles in 2016.
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Nagy went 34-31 in four years with the Bears and 0-2 in the postseason, including a loss to Pederson’s Eagles in a wild-card game at Soldier Field after the 2018 season.
Another interesting connection with Pederson and the Bears is Nick Foles, who shares a statue with Pederson outside the Linc. Foles obviously was Pederson’s quarterback when the Eagles won the Super Bowl four years ago and is under contract for one more year with the Bears.
Pederson went 42-37-1 in four years with the Eagles but led the Eagles to their only Super Bowl championship in 2017 and then back to the playoffs in 2018 and 2019.
The Bears fired Nagy and general manager Ryan Pace on Monday morning.
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The only other candidate for the Bears job whose name has surfaced so far is Bills defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier, who was on Reid’s staff in 1999 when Pederson was the Eagles’ opening-day quarterback.
Frazier spent four years on Reid’s staff and was head coach of the Vikings from 2011 through 2013. He’s worked in Buffalo since 2017 under Sean McDermott, another former Reid assistant. Before that he was Ravens secondary coach under John Harbaugh, another former Reid assistant.
Frazier played for the Bills from 1981 through 1985.